Damaged buildings are seen after flash floods and a mudslide in Trishuli, Nuwakot district, Nepal.
KATHMANDU: Nepal suspended search and rescue on Saturday due to bad weather and said it needs foreign technical help to cope with the devastating flood that tore through an area bordering Tibet.
The impoverished Himalayan nation of 30 million people will also need about $4 billion to $5 billion to rebuild after the destruction caused by Wednesday’s flood, media reports quoted the finance minister as saying.
Triggered by a glacier collapse, the huge torrent of rock, ice, mud and debris hurtled through mountain river systems on Wednesday, killing at least 626 people in Nepal and seven in China’s Tibet as it swallowed buildings, bridges and power stations in its path.
Nearly 3,000 people are still missing – about 2,426 in Nepal and at least 554 in Tibet’s Gyirong County – including at least 540 foreigners, many of them Hindu pilgrims from India.
“Search and rescue operations have been temporarily halted because it is raining and the weather is foggy,” Narendra Pariyar, the top bureaucrat for the badly hit Rasuwa district, said.
The focus is on arranging land transport to move rescued pilgrims to the capital city, Kathmandu, he said.
With the deaths in the deluge having occurred three days ago, authorities said some bodies now being recovered had decomposed beyond recognition. They would be buried after legal formalities because of health risks and a fear of epidemics.
“DNA samples will be collected, and the bodies will be buried in an open space,” the Chitwan district administration said in a notice.
In Kathmandu, families of those missing gathered outside Maharajgunj Medical Campus, where some bodies were taken. Many were trying to identify relatives through photographs of the bodies brought there, with the pictures pasted or strung on the gate and boundary walls.
Officials said only seven of 49 bodies brought to the hospital had been identified.
LAKE OVERFLOW RISK REDUCES
Authorities briefly suspended rescue operations on Friday as well when a lake, formed across the Nepal-China border after the flood, began overflowing into Nepal’s Lhende Khola and Trishuli rivers.
By Saturday, the risk of the lake overflowing had reduced, Chinese authorities said. Satellite images suggested the water in it had been slowly flowing through, decreasing the reservoir gradually, state broadcaster CCTV reported.
That lake is one of two upstream of the flood zone that Nepal is monitoring. Flood risks will persist until both fully drain, an official warned.
Nepal’s Foreign Minister Shisir Khanal said the country did not need help with search and rescue operations but required assistance in rescuing people stuck in tunnels, opening transport and communication lines in places where bridges were destroyed, identification of dead bodies, DNA testing and storing bodies for longer durations.
CHINA CALLS FOR INTERNATIONAL COOPERATION
Beijing has called for emergency aid to disaster-hit areas of Nepal and international rescue cooperation, without elaborating on what China is sending to Nepal.
Authorities in China have also been racing to trace more than 500 missing people after the flood.
Rescuers on Friday reached the worst-hit Gyirong border crossing complex, traversing mountains and valleys, and using ropes to navigate forests and cliffs after roads to the complex, hemmed in by steep Himalayan slopes, were destroyed.
Surveillance camera footage from the crossing showed huge torrents of water and debris engulfing buildings there when the flood hit, as people tried to flee. – News Agencies / Web Desk
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